I am starting the blog before football. I ought to be meeting with my writing group this morning, but instead I am in my office preparing to produce something they can actually see. I wouldn’t say I am stalled as a writer so much as I am hesitant. Steinback famously quipped, “When I face the desolate impossiblity of writing 500 pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day’s work is all I can permit myself to contemplate.”
I’m pretty sure he spelled impossibility correctly when he wrote it. I’m also certain that the idea of the impossible, while terrifying to him, was something he overcame quickly. He stood on the edge of the cliff and jumped. I stand on the edge of the cliff and pontificate. This is indicative of our relative success.
So here I stand and prepare to find an excuse not to write. Perhaps I will deal with school work, or sort files, or do laundry. Or maybe, just maybe, I will write.
Some Thoughts:
- The greatest indication of M. Shymalan’s skill as a director is the utter dissapointment people had when first seeing the creature in Signs. Think about it. What could he have put on screen to meet your expectations? What rough beast, its time come round at last, could’ve shambled unto the screen and been greater than the expectations birthed inside of your own head? Where did those expectations come from? I’ll tell you where: He built up a level of suspense and expectation so complete that when we first see the thing so many of us laughed at how far short it fell of the horror we expected in our minds.
- I looked up a few reviews of my work last night. Not too many. It felt the way I imagine it does to hear a noise somewhere in the basement and go to the top of the stairs, call out into the darkness, and perhaps flip on the lights. You look, but not terribly hard because you are afraid of what you might find. As expected, I saw nothing to terrify me. Still, I remained at the top of the stairs.